Wednesday, January 27, 2010

SECRETS OF THE GENTLEMAN THIEF

Dear Agent,

I am proud to present to you my recently completed work, a paranormal romance, Secrets of the Gentleman Thief. The 98,300 word manuscript is one of four novels I have been working on over the last year. All four novels take place in the middle 1800’s and in or near an imaginary place, the Dark Forest. Though the main characters in each book are different, some of the supporting characters, the fairies of the Dark Forest, are the same.

Haunted by a traumatic event in her childhood that is locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind, Alisa Fenton embarks on a quest to find her missing brother. She seeks out a clairvoyant who warns her that a dark stranger is searching for her who could be her salvation or bring about her ruin. While on her quest, Alisa also must struggle with the devastating illness she hides from her peers who already shun her because of an incident in her past.

Her dark stranger, an undercover agent for the crown, who has many secrets of his own to hide, is also looking for Alisa’s brother though for very different reasons.

Despite their mutual distrust, the two are forced to travel and work together. Even the startling physical attraction that they both feel and fight against won’t assuage their suspicious minds. Silencing anyone connected to the missing brother, a murderer closes in forcing them to flee and go into hiding. Passion erupts in seclusion, but will it be powerful enough to overcome their mistrust of one another?

Please allow me to thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

4 comments:

I love the query and the only thing I would suggest you change, is the use of the words, 'proud to present.' I don't know why. It could be just me though and maybe an agent would like that. Also, at the end I wouldn't plead to thank someone. Maybe just thank them and add that your full manuscript is available upon request.

Good luck with it. It sounds like a wonderful story with a great hook.

This book sounds just up my alley and I hope to be able to read it one day. Here's my suggestions:

Haunted by a traumatic event in her childhood that is locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind, Alisa Fenton embarks on a quest to find her missing brother. She seeks out a clairvoyant who warns her that a dark stranger is searching for her who could be her salvation or bring about her ruin. While on her quest, Alisa also must struggle with the devastating illness she hides from her peers who already shun her because of an incident in her past.

Her dark stranger, an undercover agent for the crown, who has many secrets of his own to hide, is also looking for Alisa’s brother though for very different reasons.

Despite their mutual distrust, the two are forced to travel and work together. Even the startling physical attraction that they both feel and fight against won’t assuage their suspicious minds. Silencing anyone connected to the missing brother, a murderer closes in forcing them to flee and go into hiding. Passion erupts in seclusion, but will it be powerful enough to overcome their mistrust of one another?

Secrets of the Gentleman Thief is a paranormal romance complete at 98,000 words

Thank for your time and consideration.

The reason I cut out the other things, is that I've read on agents blogs not to talk about how long it took you to write it or that it's part of a series. You're trying to sell the first book. Not the series. If they want to know about more of your books they'll ask. The other stuff sounded hokey to me(only my opinion) and it made me wonder if the agents would have kept reading after that.

Cut most of the first paragraph. No agent is going to care at this point that you've been "working on" four novels. Concentrate on selling book #1, and you can see about series potential later. Beyond that, everything other than the word count/genre comes out as a ramble, like you're not sure what to say about your book.

Cut"locked away...mind" from paragraph #2. It's kind of cliched and reads wordy. Stop with the intentional vagueness there, too. What - specifically - is her illness, and what - specifically - is the incident in her past. You need to reveal at least one of those things because as it is, you're creating too much distance between the reader and your character for anyone to care about her.

ugh... WHY is the stranger looking for the brother? More vagueness is a bad thing at this point. You want to create interest, not confusion. You want care, not apathy.

The final paragraph is so generic, it could be about any number of books already in print and does you no favors when trying to make your book stand out.

(That part in paragraph one I said to cut... there's a mention of fairies. There's NO mention of fantasy in the rest of the query AT ALL - except maybe for the clairvoyant. If you're pitching paranormal, then SOMETHING strange needs to happen at some point.)

I agree with all of the above, but I'm not going to be as...frank as Josin is. :) honesty is definately good though.

I like the general plot of your book. I wouldn't include your other books for the reason that you need to get one out first. You know, the whole "don't bite off more than you can chew?" Also, I think that first paragraph should go at the end. Once you've hooked the agent with just how awesome and amazing your book is, they'll be ready to hear how long it is and what the title is.

Some of the basic framework f the letter needs some tweaking as well. The sentence "could be her salvation or bring about her ruin" needs a "could" before bring. The last sentence of that second paragraph either needs to be shortened or needs to be more specific. Otherwise, the sentence acts as an anchor and pulls an otherwise great paragraph down.

The third paragraph can (possibly?) be combined with the third, but I think "who has many secrets of his own to hide" should be taken out. He's a secret agent. :) secrets come with the job. it's expected.

For the fourth paragraph, I would take out everything that talks about the murderer. That complicates an already complicated query. And never NEVER put a question in a query. It ticks agents off (from...what I've read... quoting Nathan Bransford here :) ) You can turn it into a sentence and it would be a lovely cap to your summary, though. :)

The wording on "complete at such-andsuch words" doesn't sound quite right. Of course it's complete at however many words. :P You don't write an extra 3,000 words for fun. Bare-bones is alright. Think about what everyone else is going to do (spice that final paragraph up) and do the opposite. Agents have to read hundreds of queries a day. This is a business deal. Once you've gotten past the hook, just lay out the facts and let them get on their day. the less interpretation or decoding they have to do the better. You never know. If you help them out by making that last paragraph simple and to the point, maybe they'll look at your query in a better light. (agents out there reading this, feel free to correct. I am merely a lowly writer, still botching my own query letters.)